It’s almost impossible to discuss this article without leaping out of the chair and waving my arms around, squealing with the sheer thrill of its deep and wide implications for treatment and understanding:

Using a 3-D printer, transparencies, and binder clips, these wunderkinder can create neural tissues that mimic the cellular proportions and relationships of real, living brains.

On this basis, here are some possibilities discussed in the article:

Watch how brain tissue responds under different circumstances, leading to new understanding of brain growth, disease progression and structure-dependent brain abnormalities.

Repair damaged brain tissue. With historic rates of traumatic brain injury in the most productive age group, this alone is world-changing.

With samples from patients, custom brain cultures can be grown, and drugs tested against them, targeting drug treatment that works on the first trial. This saves people who need CNS-affecting drugs countless weeks and months — even years — of untold misery, as different drugs get pushed through their systems in an effort to find one that works.

Harvard Med and MIT at their collective finest.

The great challenge, of course, is getting this OUT of the lab and INTO the populations that need it. I hope it’s not kyboshed by those whose profits depend on the current ineffective, inefficient, expensive, and unspeakably brutal systems of CNS treatment.

For once, I’ve got no logical criticisms to make. This is brilliant work which fills me with hope for those of us dealing with demyelination and all the havoc it causes. Here’s hoping it translates well into human models, and soon.

Do you know why this is, logically, a candidate for the Department of the Blitheringly Obvious?

It has to do with fetal development. In a healthy pregnancy (that is, most of them), labor starts when the fetus’s lungs — the last thing to finish developing — are done. Then the fetus signals the mother’s body, and labor begins.

The neurological system and heart are getting the finishing touches in those last few weeks, too. The final stages of fetal development are extremely important, and ever more so as it gets harder and costlier to get care in this country.

They pop out faster, yes. They also tend to need time in the neonatal ICU.

But wait, there’s more.

This article goes on to say that premature babies tend to have lifelong problems with — you guessed it — heart, lungs, and neurology. Neurological issues that consistently show up relate to coordination; learning (especially math); memory; and, most worryingly, hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis problems — which messes up the body’s ability to regulate weight, growth, anxiety, sleep, and mood; it’s a major factor in CRPS, MS, and other constitutional illnesses.

These people are far more likely to require extra care and attention from parents, school, doctors, nurses, and therapists of both body and mind, _throughout_their_lives_ — or at least, as Prof. Sullivan has shown, to the age of 21. More data to follow, as the study continues.

This is why I find “elective c-sections”, which are often done at 37 weeks just to avoid the final stage of pregnancy, so appalling. They combine the drawbacks and long-term effects of prematurity with those of nonvaginal delivery and abdominal surgery. A full house, you might say.

Back to this article, which focuses on people who were born 21 years ago, when prematurity was not optional.

She states that these personalities tend to be more driven and success-oriented. On the one hand, that could be the cortisol talking (remember the lack of regulation? These people have higher than normal cortisol levels.) On the other, these are all people who have had a higher than average level of care, attention and structure in their young lives, and that tends to produce these characteristics anyway. When young people internalize the message that there are a lot of capable adults who really care what happens to them, they don’t see failure as anything but learning how not to do it next time. And that’s a setup for success.

Having explicated her stated finding, I have to say that she did not, nor did I read anything here about how she measured these personality characteristics. In short, it’s possible she was looking for ways to make everyone feel better about the learning disabilities and systemic issues.

And that, frankly, is one of the common characteristics of nurse studies that tend to lessen the respect they otherwise deserve: nurses who achieve worldly success don’t get there without being good at making decision-makers feel good.

I looked for the text of the study at her site, but no luck. I’ll look on PubMed once I’m off this handheld. I’d like to clear up that last gratuitous silliness, if I can.

* Can’t find it on PubMed. It was published very recently, so it might be worth checking back.

I have CRPS-1/RSD/causalgia, and when your condition has more than one name, it’s a bad sign. I was a nurse, I was a tech writer, and I remain fascinated by health and technology.

Some parts of my brain have blown gaskets, but examining the science relating to neurology/immunology/endocrinology — and mulling how it could work in real life — seems to go just fine. It’s appropriate to both my professions that I want to track, document, and share what I learn.

You’re invited to watch and engage in this interesting journey. It’s taking place at an unimaginably rich, burgeoning age of technological development and biological understanding.